Wednesday, 12 December 2012

So, I am on time with my post this week, however I am slightly behind with my work. I expected to have the legs positioned and start work on the arms but due to having to go Carpet shopping, and other house issues, I am only half way through the legs. Get ready for a picture heavy and word light post!﻿

This is where we were up to last week, the model was sat ready to be hacked and chopped with a wealth of ideas ready to be tested. Chopped and hacked he was, I really regret using Black Reach Terminators, but, I made some headway and I hope with some Greenstuffing they will look decent by the end.﻿

The first thing I did was slice his legs off at the knee joint, I made the effort to cut from the back halfway through so that the cut would go through the flexible joint area, to keep the aesthetics, I then cut down from the back of the raised knee pad creating a rough L cut.

I then drilled holes in both Shins and Thighs for the pin (paperclip) to be put it giving me easy dry runs to get the leg positioning right. ﻿

I then straightened out one of my 100 paperclips ready to cut and use as pins...

and then I used my cutters to cut two lengths of paperclip to roughly half an inch, and then had to cut them down again and again because they were too long, but its always better to have too much and cut down than not have enough and start again.

Here you can see the pins being ready to use for their first dry run, and its obvious how the pins are too long, I cut them down a couple of millimeters at a time until I felt they were the right length.

I then realised that I hadn't positioned the top of the leg for a kneeling position... thankfully I hadn't glued anything yet, and spent about 20 minutes slicing through the hip joint, I had to trim the leg down on the inner thigh so that it would point straight forwards instead of at an angle. I then re-glued it into position (which put me behind a bit).﻿

While the glue was drying I decided to try my hand at making rivets for the outside of Vorenus' Storm Shield. I pushed the drill bit right down into the pin vice leaving just the tip showing, then cut the plasticard to shape and placed it onto the un-opened blu-tack (like modelling clay). I then pushed quite hard in a set pattern (starting with each corner then at regular intivals) leaving me with indents like above...

and the front looked like this (not the best picture but I am using my phone). This gives me the basis of the storm shield, and should be easy enough to finish now. This week I will finish positioning the legs, and I hope to start work on the sword arm.

Stay tuned, and feel free to let me know any tips or tricks I might have missed.

Friday, 7 December 2012

Coming at you a fortnight and two days late!!! I havent been able to do much with Birthdays, and house moving but I did manage to buy all the parts I think I will need, and I have started chopping bits off models. I however don't have any WIP pictures yet, and will hopefully have them next week (where I hope to do an update on time).

As you can see, I have:
Metal Paperclips (these will be used to pin parts of the model (mainly legs to help get them into the right angles)
Plasticard (this will be used to create unique shields, tabards, studded leather aprons, and maybe some armour plates to beef up the models)
Blu Tack (this I will be using as "soft modelling clay" to put under the plasticard when pressing down using a pin/needle to create rivets)
Various Tools (I have a small saw, clippers, pin vice (mini drill), and a hobby knife/stanley knife)
and a Cutting Board (I got this because I always end up cutting myself or whatever I am leaning on, this also gives me a nice large space to keep things seen, and a level surface to work on)

Here is the first model I am working on, he is just a standard Black Reach Terminator, I will also be using a standard Assault Terminator Storm Shield, and a Grey Knight Terminator arm and Broadsword. What will be done with this guy is that he will be armed with Storm Shield and Frost Blade. His legs are going to be cut and repositioned so that he is kneeling forwards thrusting his sword ahead of him. His shield will be held over his head with an enemy tumbling over it, I plan to extend his shield and make it into a Roman style tower shield using plasticard, the current shield will then become the butress. I also plan my first attempt at a studden apron out of plasticard to go between his legs.

For next week I hope to have some pictures of this guy in bits, and started to be pinned, so that he will be in the right position. I think that this might have been easier if I had started with normal Terminators, but we have to work with what we have.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

This one's a bit late from me, partly because I forgot and partly because it's been quite hard to gauge my limits for the coming month. After today, I'm off work for a while and this time last year, I probably could have blitzed through my entire backlog as I would have been at home on my own for 8+ hours a day.

Now the reality is a bit different, but what I'm hoping is that whilst I'm in during the day it'll get rid of odd jobs, errands and housework that pile up until evening time and cut into my possible painting time. So, it's been really hard to gauge how much exactly I will or won't get done this month.

Anyways, enough of the life story. I'm aiming high for this month's push! Onto the lists!

Spray:- Dark Vengeance Contents

First up, I've had Dark Vengeance bought and built since it was released wanting the Chaos bits as allies for my Chaos Daemons and also to bulk out my Dark Angels. I love the Plasma tactical squad and it's only as I'm writing this that I really want to get another one.

These guys were built pretty quick but have been sat in a box ever since. With more daytime to play with whilst I'm off I can hopefully get these sprayed up ready for the new year!

Fix:- De-magnetise Eldar Jetbikes.

I used these for the first time on Monday night and all my fears for them came true. The magnets I used were too small / not strong enough and I spent most of the time using them just trying to attach the model back to the flying stand magnet or fixing magnets back in as I went.

I think I'm going to try and remove the magnets off them, make the skimmer hole slightly wider and put the main stem into there and glue in place. Having to faff about sticking models back together during a game is something I really, really hate.

Also as I was putting stuff away, I dropped my Jetbike Farseer on the floor, so he needs repairing ASAP.

Very optimistic with this lot. My logic is that it's freezing outside, so I'll be in the house of an evening more watching tele and getting some painting time in.

My logic is that this can be done in 3 batches. The first being the Razorwing and the Raider, they're very similar in that they're both vehicles and consist of 90% metal and flat panel work. I'm hoping I could knock these out in a week or weekend if I'm very lucky.

The second batch will be the 10 Wyches and 15 Warriors. 25 infantry is a fair chunk to aim for, but I'm allowing myself 2 weeks for this lot. They're similar in size and colours so it won't hopfully be too much of a stretch.

The last batch is the Hellions who I'm guessing are going to be quite awkward so whatever time is left after the first 2 can get spent on these.

By time these are done it should give me some new units to play with and try out the rules for in 6th edition - Flyers specifically.

WARNING!: We're leaving the valley of optimism and heading for Dreamland with the rest of this stuff.

Few years ago I made 2 Ork flyers for Apocalypse games out of some WW2 planes from Hobbycraft. With the rules for Dakkajets allowing me to finally field something I like in the Ork Fast Attack slot, I figure now would be a good time to convert them to proper weaponry.

The other issue with them is that they aren't attached to the flying bases properly. They used to be super-glued on, but as you can imagine... it's a nightmare to transport them like that. So along with converting the appropriate weapons, I need to find a reliable way to get them attached to the bases and take them off it at the end of each game.

This is last year's Christmas haul here. I got a bit excited when the Necron codex got re-done and bought lots of stuff with GW vouchers I got given, built it all and then never touched my Necrons again - mostly due to the amount of them that cropped up and the emphasis everyone had on the flyers. They became the Grey Knights.

Anyway, they're all built and sanded (I think) and hopefully if I can find time and spray, I'll get these done ready for the new year.

Right, so that's my mega optimistic December list. I'll be lucky if I manage to just get Dark Vengeance sprayed but after Christmas comes I'll probably have loads of people to go visit, and hopefully a few new Xbox games and films to distract me from painting for the forseeable future.

If by some miracle I can get the Dark Eldar and Eldar shifted off the painting pile this year, I'm planning a massive curveball for January's painting pledge.

Monday, 3 December 2012

I'm aware it's currently December 3rd, but I managed to finish off the remainder of my November painting pledge over the weekend, along with extra stuff painted on top of the original list.

The hardest part of the painting pledge stuff is when I need to spray. I leave work in the morning and it's dark, get home and it's dark, can't spray indoors and no longer have access to a garage to do my spraying. So it means I'm limited to weekends and only then if it's not too busy and baby Badger lets me.

And proud to say, everything on that list got done and more! I managed to spray the remaining Eldar bits up after getting a new can of Chaos Black and the weather keeping dry on Saturday. So now I'm trying to decide what to go with for my December pledge (tomorrow's post).

Along with those, I got a bit of evening painting time on Friday and Saturday to chip away at the pile of Dark Eldar I got hold of last month.

Haemonculis with a little box thing... Use him as a Shattershard with a Venom Blade.

The Haemonculis was the most awkward thing out of all these to paint. I reckon I could have knocked out the jetbikes and the Archon in a night on their own, but I kept having to go back and touch up details I'd missed on all the others - along with about 20 layers of Cadian fleshtone on the Haemonculis' coat.

So yeah, expect December's pledge tomorrow after I decide what I'll be getting done tonight...